The Yes'Mam

AKA: Brown Noser, Butt Kisser, Suck Up, Teacher’s Pet.

There is a place for Yes Ma’am’s. Starting a new role when you are completely green is the perfect time to embrace your Yes Ma’am. Learning a new skill or diving into a new journey - you listen, learn, and take exhaustive notes. You soak everything in and you do it until you have learned enough of the position/skill/craft/etc. to start asking questions. And then is when you move out of the yes ma’am and begin asking why.

Where there is no place for the yes ma’am is in Manager positions and above.

The yes ma’am mentality is only beneficial to your personal and professional development in the beginning stages of learning. When someone is promoted or hired into a managerial/director and above role, they are in that role because they should know better than anyone else on how to move forward.

Yes Ma’am’s do not know better. And it can be destructive to an organization.

Colleagues in lower positions will start noticing and questioning…the whispers begin. Colleagues in adjacent roles will lose respect and start getting frustrated, and will either increase their workload to make up for the Yes Ma’am’s ineptitude (which will cause major frustration, and resume refreshes) - or - their frustration in the Yes Ma’am will cause them to lose passion and check out.

For leadership, it can be disaster. It feels good when ideas are met with complete enthusiasm and nods of approval. The problem is that Yes Ma’am’s only know how to agree and execute others ideas - even if it is not the right direction or a short term fix that will lead to a long term problem. Leaders must be able to put their egos aside and understand their strengths in order to hire talent that fill those voids; otherwise, they are in effect, talking to themselves and the company will only be able to go as far as their strengths will carry.

What To Do:

As a leader, know your strengths and hire to support and fill your weakness. Know when every idea you bring is met with zero resistance and full approval it may be time to start poking holes and pushing back.

As a Yes Ma’am, it’s time to fly. You are living in a comfort of executing ideas that are not your own, but when they go wrong, it will blow up in your face; the security that is initially felt when things are going well will drop from under your feet in an instant. Better to be standing on your own ground.